Eric Hebborn (1934-1996) was an English painter and art forger….

Question Answered step-by-step Eric Hebborn (1934-1996) was an English painter and art forger…. Eric Hebborn (1934-1996) was an English painter and art forger. Hebborn attended the Royal Academy of Arts and then the British School at Rome, two of the most prestigious fine arts schools at the time. Underappreciated as an artist, he turned his hand to copying old masters. His forgeries were detected when an art curator noticed that two of the Gallery’s drawings, by two different artists, were sketched on identical paper. In his autobiography, Drawn to Trouble: Confessions of a Master Forger,  Hebborn  admitted to selling thousands of forged paintings, drawings, and sculptures. He boasted how easy it was to fool art experts who, he contended, should have been able to detect that they were fakes. “Only the experts  are  worth  fooling.  The  greater  the expert, the greater the satisfaction in deceiving them.” However, his personal moral code would not allow him to sell his forgeries to amateur collectors. Hebborn was never sued because embarrassed art experts refused to admit in court that they had been deceived.Mark Landis (born 1955) is an Amer-ican art forger. He attended the Art Insti-tute of Chicago, where he learned to restore damaged paintings. Then he began to forge lesser-known artists and donated his fake paintings to more than fifty art galleries and museums in twenty states. His forg-eries were detected when a gallery curator noticed that a Paul Signac watercolor of two boats was similar to a Signac water-color that had been donated to another art gallery.Landis  donated  the  paintings  under  various aliases, saying that the paintings were in memory of a deceased parent. Landis has not been prosecuted because he never profited from his forgeries. He never accepted any money from the art galleries and museums, nor did he claim any tax deductions for his donations. “We couldn’t identify a federal crime violation,” said Robert Withman, senior FBI investigator. “Basically, you have a guy going around the country on his own nickel giving stuff to museums.”Questions 1. Is it ethically acceptable to sell forgeries to art experts who should be able to differen-tiate a fake from an authentic work of art?2. Comment on Hebborn’s personal moral code.3.  Was  anyone  harmed  when  Landis  donated his forged paintings to various art galleries and museums?4. Does the fact that Landis did not profit from his donations mean that it was ethically acceptable to give forgeries to art galleries and museums?5. Summarize the Case   Sources: Eric Hebborn, Drawn to Trouble: Confessions of a Master Forger (Mainstream Publishing, New York, NY, 1991).Alec Wilkinson, “The Giveaway,” New Yorker Magazine,  August 26, 2013. Business EDUCATION 1354 Share QuestionEmailCopy link Comments (0)